September 2013

September 30, 2013

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (left) with his Indian vis-à-vis Manmohan Singh in New York (Photo: Jay Mandal/On Assignment)

After carefully examining the omnipresent Jay Mandal’s pictures I conclude that that India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is not a dehati aurat or a peasant/rustic woman. For a woman, Dr. Singh has too much facial hair, for one, although his voice may have a feminine register.

What is hilarious about India-Pakistan relations is that they have subplots that would have defied some of the quirkiest fiction writers. Who would have thought that barely hours before his first ever meeting with Dr. Singh, Sharif and his staff would be scrambling to clarify that the Pakistani prime minister did not refer to the Indian prime minister as a peasant woman?

According to a story by the Press Trust of India (PTI) Sharif directed his top aides, including Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani, to clarify to the Indian delegation as well as Dr. Singh that he never referred to the latter as a rustic woman. There were reports that during his informal interactions with handpicked Indian and Pakistani journalists before the meeting, Sahrif reportedly spoke of an allegory about a village woman who runs to the village chief for every little dispute. He was apparently referring to Dr. Singh taking up the issue of Pakistan supported terrorism in India with U.S. President Barack Obama.

The PTI story says that Jilani called India’s National Security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon early morning to clarify that Sharif had never referred to Dr. Singh as a peasant woman. Whether or not such a description was used by Sharif is moot to the controversy that followed. Here are the leaders of two nuclear armed neighbors about to meet for the first time and their top aides are compelled to exchange phone calls over whether one of them pejoratively called the other a peasant woman. If a fiction writer had written that it would have been dismissed as ludicrous.

In this laughably sordid affair no one has bothered to represent the feeling of the peasant woman. Does Sharif even begin to understand the challenges of the dehati aurat? For one they do not run into exile to save their skin. They stay on in their village and do their best to stand up to men precisely like Sahrif. If I were Dr. Singh, I would take that as a compliment.

Sharif and Singh (Photo: Jay Mandal/On Assignment

Since the top item on the Singh-Sharif agenda seemed to be about the peasant woman, it does not give me much scope to analyze the finer details of their talks. Other than shaking hands and engaging in some polite exchanges about the same list of bilateral grievances, nothing much seems to have happened. Of course, the two accepted each other’s invitation to visit their respective countries at the earliest convenience. But that is neither here nor there.

One fundamental factor that inhibits any Pakistani leader from showing a level of genuine empathy and sensitivity towards frequent terror attacks in India at the behest of their country’s intelligence-military complex is that for every attack in India there are ten more in Pakistan. For years now Pakistan has discovered that dismounting the tiger of terrorism is perilous and frequently fatal. Of course, the fact that Pakistan is now a bigger victim of its own atrocious policies fails to inspire much sympathy in India because people there blithely point out ‘You reap what you sow.’

What both sides need are two transformational figures at helm who transcend the petty calculus of short-term gains. I am not sure whether that is possible, although it is more likely to happen in India than Pakistan simply because of such deeply entrenched rival power elites in Pakistan which often work at cross purposes. India has those too but nowhere close to the extent as they exist in Pakistan.

* The headline to today’s post does not mean anything other than hopefully sounding clever.

September 29, 2013

At the risk of coming across as fixated on the issue, let me complete my trivial trilogy on Congress Party vice president Rahul Gandhi’s damning pronouncement against his own party government’s decision to issue an ordinance to protect convicted lawmakers.

Sitting so far from the scene of action one can’t do much more than second-guessing his motivations. The form may have been bad but the substance of what he said certainly was commendable. But then is it necessary to get hung up on the form? Perhaps in public life it is. In my widely published comment on the IANS wire yesterday I had used the words “churlish and unbecoming”* to describe the way Gandhi castigated the ordinance. I still maintain my view.

However, since the objections Gandhi raised go to the very heart of India’s polity, it may be worthwhile to speculate on what set him off. There are several plausible explanations. One is the most obvious one which is that he felt so genuinely exercised at not having been able to preempt the ordinance that the most honorable he saw to make himself heard was ultimately through what he did. His dramatic appearance at a routine party press briefing did shake up things quite a bit and in the process gave him the kind of visibility that he has chosen to avoid. Intrinsic to this obvious explanation is also the point that he said what he did out of genuine conviction and that was the reason he decided not to finesse his language.

But beyond the obvious explanation, which is sometimes the most accurate one, we all want to read deeper, sinister meanings where none may exist. So let’s try a couple of more scenarios for sheer fun.

Scenario one is that this was Rahul’s way of breaking free from the shadow of his mother, party president Sonia Gandhi. It was as much a political rebellion as it was a familial one. There were shades of his late father, Rajiv Gandhi who too used to display such aggressive impatience against entrenched practices early in his career. Talking of a familial rebellion, I don’t see the need for it unless there are behind-the-scenes tensions between the mother and son that we are not privy to. Sonia Gandhi may have chosen to go along with political expediencies in agreeing with the ordinance but Rahul could have felt compelled to oppose out of genuine convictions. Since he did not get his way, this is how he gets even.

Scenario two could be that this was an elaborate performance where all the major players, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, were in on it. The logic behind this speculation would be that as a coalition government Dr. Singh’s cabinet had to reach out for some compromise in order to retain the support of tainted but powerful political figures who may have been affected by the Supreme Court ruling barring convicted politicians from continuing in public life. But simultaneously, it had to create a pressure group within the Congress Party that rejects such expedient moves in a message to the coalition partners. So while the coalition cabinet did what it had to do, behind-the-scenes the Congress Party with a clear understanding among the mother and son Gandhis and Dr. Singh had already agreed on Rahul firing this salvo.

Since Rahul seems to believe in candor, he should hold a major press conference on this subject with a detailed opening statement. Perhaps he should candidly discuss his frustrations at having to deal with the skullduggery that goes on in all political parties. That may yet separate him from the rest of the crowd and give him precisely the kind of transparent national platform that he can make his own. For all you this may truly be his coming of age moment. Forty three may seem a bit old to come of age but in India’s politics it is still considered rather youthful. Dr. Singh, incidentally, is 81.

Long years in my profession have kept me drowned in the marinade of cynicism. It is entirely possible that what Rahul Gandhi did was prompted by a sincerely felt need to break the mould and start afresh.

*Even by the grudgingly accepted journalistic standards of self-absorption, quoting oneself the very next day is excessive.

September 28, 2013

The following comment was released today on the IANS, India’s largest independent wire service, and appeared worldwide.

By Mayank Chhaya

Tempting as it is for the breathless 24/7 TV talking heads and anchors to spin it, Congress Party vice president Rahul Gandhi's damning indictment of the Indian government will have next to no impact on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's various diplomatic engagements in the United States.

The Indian media has focused on how Gandhi's unvarnished rejection of the Singh government's ordinance to protect convicted lawmakers came as a deep embarrassment even as he prepared to meet President Barack Obama on Friday. Gandhi's comments were said to have the potential to undermine Singh's meeting with the US president.

Those who offer such analysis willfully disregard the fact that the interlocutors are all seasoned politicians accustomed to the capricious nature of realpolitik. Obama, in particular, has frequently endured barbs and taunts far more demeaning and personal from his Republican Party detractors than what Singh has had to. Obama, perhaps more than anyone else, understands the exigencies of politics and knows better than to make his judgments influenced by such events.

Beyond that, it is a bit laughable to think that the White House would calibrate how the president should treat the leader of a country it regards as its most defining strategic partner on the basis of a political sideshow in New Delhi. Sure, from the Indian prime minister's standpoint Gandhi could have chosen a less inopportune time to let himself loose. That said, this little piece of political theatre would have no currency in Washington.

There are also comments about how Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif might meet Dr. Singh with decidedly lower expectations because he now stands diminished by Gandhi. Those who offer such perspectives forget that Sharif comes from Pakistan, where leaders are routinely packed off abroad into exiles and brought back. Apart from Obama, if there is anyone else who might keenly understand the vagaries of politics it is Sharif.

The problem with such controversies is that they get tossed about in a large echo chamber where politicians and media professionals are locked in a near incestuous embrace. They both labor under the illusion that the echo chamber is the real world and keep talking to one another.

Perhaps a case could be made that Gandhi should have waited until Dr. Singh returned from his annual pilgrimage to the US., partly to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York. On the other hand, it is not an issue that might make or mar the Singh government's credibility when it comes to foreign policy issues. Much as some in the media like it to have happened like that, one can be fairly certain that President Obama was not given a blow by blow account of what Gandhi was saying even as Dr. Singh was making his way to the White House. And once that briefing was over Obama decided to immediately scale down his level of interest in his visitor.

As for Sharif, it is entirely likely that his delegation has been made aware of this minor crisis but coming from a country where they have such crises for breakfast, it is highly questionable whether the Pakistani prime minister too might take Dr. Singh less seriously because of it.

What has happened since the advent of the 24/7 broadcast media is that there are celebrity anchors who seem to revel in the superficialities of the moment without quite bothering to look at the larger picture.

Quite apart from all that, it is clear that Gandhi's construct was rather churlish and unbecoming of someone who has been projected to be India's next prime minister. It may have been representative of his youth but it was crafted in a manner that fell short of someone who has been reared in the rarefied world of power and privilege all his life. If the purpose was to reveal a politically rebellious and irreverent side of his, then it did not quite succeed other than sending news anchors slobbering to their chairs. Even if the comments were made out of genuine conviction - and it seemed they were - they were still lacking in finesse.

Perhaps the most unconvincing part was the attempt by Gandhi to cast himself as a nonconformist outsider when, in fact, in many ways he is the very definition of an insider to Delhi’s political gamesmanship.

September 27, 2013

I am trying hard to believe that Congress Party vice president Rahul Gandhi’s seemingly impromptu expression of outrage at his own party government’s decision to issue an ordinance to protect convicted lawmakers is a real moment.

My world famous body language reading skills are falling short to make a clear determination whether this was genuine or carefully calibrated political grandstanding. If I put aside my almost kneejerk journalistic cynicism, then Rahul’s unscheduled appearance at a news conference comes across as a truly impromptu move.

For him to call the executive order “complete non-sense” which should be “torn up and thrown away” is quite a stinging indictment of the Manmohan Singh government. It is the sort of stuff that in politics separates men from boys.

"It is time to stop this nonsense, political parties, mine and all others....If you want to fight corruption in the country whether it is Congress Party or the BJP (main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party), we cannot continue making these small compromises. Because if we make these small compromises, then we compromise everywhere,” a visibly riled up Rahul said.

For those of you who may not keep track of such political-legal developments in India, in July the country’s Supreme Court barred convicted politicians from holding public offices. The Supreme Court ruling is fraught with serious implications in a system where an estimated 30 percent federal and state lawmakers face criminal charges.

It is particularly difficult for the coalition Singh government whose two key political figures face the prospects of losing their seats because of the ruling. Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former chief minister of the politically powerful state of Bihar as well as a former cabinet minister, and Rasheed Masood, a former health minister and member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, both are caught in legal troubles. In fact, Masood, who is a ruling Congress Party member, was found guilty in a case about corruption in nomination for seats in medical schools. Yadav, who has his own party but is among the most high profile backers of the Singh government, is facing possible conviction in a scam about an alleged misuse of his state’s funds to provide fodder for nonexistent livestock.

There is a strong opinion that holds that the Singh government’s clumsy effort to push ahead with the ordinance was motivated by a wholly political wish to protect such politicians. In fact, Rahul went so far as to publicly reveal some details of his own party’s internal debate which clearly say that the ordinance was brought forward for “political considerations.” If that is the case, then this could well and truly be an instance of genuine political rebellion. What inhibits me though is the unassailable position that Rahul enjoys as the Congress Party’s vice president as well as its most talked about prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections.

It is odd that someone of his influence and standing was unable to force the government to abandon an executive order he considers “complete non-sense” and bad enough to be “torn up and thrown away.” It stretches credulity to a breaking point to think that if Rahul wishes, he cannot preempt something which is potentially so damaging. That’s why I am unable to decide whether his outrage was genuine or part a carefully orchestrated move to lend him an aura of rebellious independence.

Why would he embarrass his own party’s government unless he genuinely felt upset by the ordinance? That’s a fair question. I don’t have the answer. May be he has decided within his own very tight knit circle of advisors that it is time to dispel the impression that he is a reluctant politician who does not have the stomach to take on the more abrasively confident prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, Narendra Modi. This is a great opportunity to swim against the current and bolster his credentials as an outsider. But then there is no greater insider in the Congress Party than Rahul. So how do we reconcile the two? One is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but these days the benefit of the doubt runs so low it is becoming harder to do so.

Let’s just say for the sake or argument that this was Rahul’s way of breaking free from the constraints of politics of expediency and fashion a new course for his party. We will find out soon enough, when he decides the kind of candidates for the parliamentary elections, whether this was just grandstanding or provably reformist.

September 26, 2013

On his 90th birth anniversary today, I republish two little pieces I wrote about Dev Anand soon after his death two years ago:

I first met Dev Anand in 1984, when he was 61, which in Dev Anand years would be early 20s.

He wore a blue gabardine shirt and black corduroy trousers. A flaming orange scarf was wrapped around his neck. He stood in the doorway to his Navketan office in Khira Estate, Santa Cruz, with hands akimbo, mouth breaking into his signature toothless smile, and said, “You are young, Mayank.” For the record I was 23. It sounded as if he was relieved that I was young.

Before that first meeting I had spoken to him a couple of times on the phone, one of which had such a refreshing Dev Anand whimsy attached to it. Sikh separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had just been killed in Operation Blue Star and I was seeking reactions from prominent figures of Bombay. Dev Anand was one of them.

I called his residence Iris Park in Juhu. The first call was answered by an aide of his who said something which could mean any number of things in the context of a Hindi movie star except what it really means. The aide said, “Sahab, abhi bathroom mein hein aur ready ho rahen hein.” (He is in the bathroom and getting ready).

Since I was on a deadline, I called again five minutes later. This time another man answered with a distinctively stretched hello that sounded like “haloooo.” Perhaps half of India would have recognized that voice instantly. It was Dev Anand and my first ever conversation with him. I could hear some water flowing in the background. I told him who I was and explained the purpose of my call.

“Mayank, can I call you back in 15 minutes? I am in my shower,” he said and actually held the receiver close to the showerhead to prove that he was telling the truth. He told me to leave my number with his aide. That is another thing with movie stars. They generally do not return your calls. That’s just their way of saying that they would never call you back.

Some 20 minutes later I received a call from Dev Anand. He gave me a brief reaction and ended the call saying, “Let’s meet sometime.”

We met several times over the next quarter century or so, the last being on my last visit to Mumbai last year. There are so many stories to tell which I would do over the course of the next few days. For today, one particular bit from my first interview with him is instructive because it speaks so eloquently to his character.

We spent nearly two hours together in his rather charmingly unkempt office, but he did not sit down even for a moment. Barely third year into my career as a journalist, I considered it very becoming of me to ask insolent questions, one of which was, “Mr. Anand, what do you have more—talent or enthusiasm?”

The impudence of the question was not lost on someone who had already been an iconic movie star for close to four decades by the time I posed it. The only sign that this otherwise remarkably classy gentleman was discomfited by my effrontery was evident in the way he took two brisk rounds of his desk and said, “I am as talented as anybody else.”

It is entirely a measure of Mr. Anand’s character that he did not let my first encounter with him stand in the way of what turned out to be a long friendship.

The first interview also tried to dwell on themes that I thought other journalists, mostly specializing in Hindi movies (I was a general hard news reporter), were not at all curious about. Flamboyance was Dev Anand’s default temperament and I saw an opening there. Since by that time it was more a conversation than an interview I said something to this effect. “It would seem that you use your flamboyance as a shield to keep most of the world out. They are so taken in by your flamboyance and charisma that they do not bother to look beyond it.”

He had a fountain pen in his mouth as he looked at me and then through me. He then drummed his desk with the pen as if harmonizing what he was about to say and then said, “That is an unusual question and unusual theory. But I am not going to discuss that.”

Another question I remember distinctly was about his views on friendship. His reply, “Everybody is a buddy but then nobody is.”

P.S.: In 2001, as the founder-owner of a now defunct California based publishing house I almost commissioned Dev Anand to write his autobiography. We had even drawn up the basic contract but it did not work out because, in his words, “It is too early look back.” He was 78 then.

***

Self-absorption is the core fuel of movie stars. Unless you believe that the world is watching you at all times, you have no business being a movie star. I think Dev Anand had mastered that truth.

Although this little post may seem as if I am being sarcastic or that I am smirking at him, nothing could be further from the truth. (Or is it farther from the truth?) Those who inhabit the make-believe world of cinema have to create agreeable realities around them and then make them believable.

Anand was shooting his movie called “Love At Times Square” in the U.S. in 2002 and some of the plot unfolded in San Francisco. He called to say that he would like me to accompany him for the shoot. “We will talk about this, that and the other,” he said on the phone from New York.

This particular clip relates to the shoot around the Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. I decided to carry my camcorder and record the event for my own entertainment. Although the clip is short, there is something revealing about the way the mind of a movie star works, particularly someone like Dev Anand who seemed to genuinely believe that people just stand and watch whenever and wherever he showed up. While very frequently that was indeed true, in this particular case he was merely coopting a parallel reality into his own world.

If you cue to 10 seconds, you would hear Anand say, “You can all stand and watch, why not?” For some reason this little remark has become one of my favorite expressions because it is so deeply illustrative of one man’s self-belief.

Those of you who might be familiar with the Fisherman’s Wharf would know that it is one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist spots. On any given day, there are hundreds of visitors enjoying its easy picturesqueness. I can tell you as a firsthand witness that other than about a dozen members of Anand’s unit, no one was paying much attention to the shoot. People were just walking past unaware of the presence of an Indian movie icon in their midst. In any case, how would they know who he was?

However, for Anand, who was already 78 then and had lived the life of a giant movie star for over 50 years, it took no time to reflexively rearrange the reality and conclude that they were all there to watch him and the shoot. Hence the almost involuntary remark, “You can all stand and watch, why not?”

Here is a suggestion. Next time you go to a party try saying this line aloud. I guarantee you will feel good and might even make some people stand and watch. Why not?

September 25, 2013

Reading about the ridiculous US-Iran diplomatic choreography that played out or did not play out at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) yesterday, the first thought that came to me was to tell the men involved to grow up.

The broad debate surrounding the so-called Iranian snub of America or the American cold shoulder to Iran is laughably about who offered a handshake and who spurned it. Did President Barack Obama come across as too clingy and Iran’s newly minted President Hassan Rouhani shunned him saying ‘Not now’? Or was it that Rouhani was too needy and Obama gave him the silent treatment? These are the two main questions being asked. Excuse the exaggerated tone but it does capture the essence of the diplomatic tease that went down.

The overriding opinion here seems to be that President Obama got played by the crafty man from Asia even as a White House official was quoted as saying, “Ultimately it became clear that that was too complicated for them at this time.” The official also added that “the Iranians, number one, have an internal dynamic that they have to manage” and they “were not ready to have an encounter at the presidential level.”

On the other hand the Iranians explained it thus: “The assumption that a meeting per se could be decisive or help solve problems is absolutely wrong,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham was quoted as saying. “We think that we should wait until a proper time for such a meeting comes.”

As is always the case, the truth depends on your vantage point and what you have been primed for. Who snubbed whom after who courted whom is the kind of question that will never be answered truthfully. That is because the truth is always carefully arranged and embellished in such matters. The only thing that we do know for certain is that Obama and Rouhani did not meet. Or did they and we don’t know? Who knows? They could have had a hush-hush meeting which would never be confirmed after both parties mutually agreed to keep it so.

It is best to go by the official version here which is that they did not meet for whatever reasons. Should they have met? Those who still firmly hang on to the antiquated notion that a meeting with the U.S. president is a rare gift afforded to the chosen few would say not. There is a tendency to cast such personal meetings in aural terms. That is precisely why you have such ridiculous gestures as the U.S. president “dropping by” in on a dignitary visiting the White House whom he does not want to elevate with a formal meeting in the Oval Office. It has happened to the Dalai Lama, for instance, in keeping with the White House being mindful of not offending China even while not wanting to be a discourteous host. There is pathetic symbolism to the place where meetings take place.

There were reports that the fastidious minders on both sides would work out a plan where Obama and Rouhani’s paths would accidentally cross at the U.N. headquarters in a way that the two men would exchange pleasantries and possibly shake hands. An administration official was quoted as saying, “An “encounter” would be permissible. Not a long one, but an “informal, brief encounter.” It was not clear though whether they would actually shake hands or merely touch the tips of their index fingers. It is as if any kind of physical contact would lead to a transference of unverifiable but potentially dangerous disease.

It would be so much simpler if world leaders just met and talked more rather than wasting time over such trivialities. Speaking of that, at least India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken a clear stand by deciding to meet Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, possibly on September 29 on the sidelines of the UNGA. Singh is scheduled to meet Obama on September 27 in Washington. Of course, no one expects any breakthrough out of the Singh-Sharif meeting but that it is taking place at all is seen as important. The two countries have had so many issues for so long that oftentimes the leaders from either side forget exactly what it is that they are fighting over in their latest round.

With the 2014 parliamentary elections looming in India, one can be almost certain that the Singh-Sharif meeting will not be much more than a warm neighborly exchange. I think the two men should talk in chaste Punjabi which may produce better results than English.

September 24, 2013

The literary press dusts off ideas of geographic dislocation, cultural identity, immigrant experience and suchlike every time Jhumpa Lahiri publishes a new novel. It is as if those are the only vantage points from which her writing makes sense. I have never understood those ideas other than grasping the superficiality of their lexical meaning. For instance, I do not comprehend geographic dislocation. What is that?

Lahiri’s latest ‘The Lowland’ is being received with remarkable praise and effusion. One is genuinely happy for her simply because it takes a lot to produce any creative body of work. The success of any writer anywhere is the success of all writers everywhere. (I say this only because it sounds quotable).

To the extent that she has consistently remained celebrated by most people who read her, critics and regular readers alike, it is commendable. For those who do not write or make films or paint or compose music or generally engage in creating consumable content it is hard to understand that these are not easily accomplished.

It is not my case that there is anything even remotely special about creators of content. On the contrary, it has always been my case that there is nothing particularly special about them even though what they do is not as easy as those who consume it may make it sound. I do not really know what the point here is but I have made it irrespective.

That said, every time a new work is produced by someone in my ethnic propinquity I try to check it out, be it a film or a novel or a painting or a musical composition. It is in keeping with my continuing quest to understand what is so grandly called “the human condition.” It has been for decades that I have engaged in this exercise without getting any closer to genuine comprehension. I just do not get what the allure of such writing is. What is the “human condition” in it?

Journalists who interview Lahiri and other similar writers invariably use terms such as geographic dislocation, identity and immigrant experience. They use these terms to create a certain seriousness of purpose in the author’s book. They get into details of the process that leads an author to write something, anything, in terms of his or her motivation. The discourse invariably gets laden with sociocultural constructs, none of which I really understand. Successful writers in the category of Lahiri acquire a certain gravitas which feeds their compulsion to say important things, deep things, lofty things, at all times. In their defense, more often than not they are only responding to an overanalyzing critic’s attempts to make their interviews stand apart.

It has been my case for as long as I remember that the process of any creation, particularly the literary kind, is way less endowed with mystique than those who read insist on according it. It is utterly futile to second-guess any writer because the actual process of writing is quite mechanical. I am a writer of zero consequence despite having written millions of words over the decades. There is next to no prospect of ever being in a position where serious literary critics would feel compelled to ask me deeply felt questions about the human condition and the geographic dislocation it often engenders and how it, in turn, impacts, our cultural impulses. However, if that ever happens I would have absolutely nothing to say.

Lately, I have revived with surprising productivity my Urdu/Hindi poetry. Although I have been writing that since I was 15 or perhaps even younger, there has never been a moment when my ghazals or haikus have been a result of some profound emotional churning. None of what one finds in those ghazals or haikus in terms of anger, despair, rage, romance, disgust or whatever else is at all representative of what I feel or believe in. To me they are nothing more than manufactured ideas that happen to rhyme and may have some intrinsic cleverness or quirkiness. It is a contrived performance.

I can tell you from personal experience that it can often be a mistake to read anything into a writer’s motivations by reading their works. So stop asking Jhumpa Lahiri about geographic dislocation, cultural identity, immigrant experience and suchlike.

September 23, 2013

For reasons which are entirely understandable, governors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Indian central bank, have never been glamorous celebrities. They have mostly been dour men of ages where they longer have any incentive to remove their ear hair and those who spout abstruse figures which few outside their rarefied circles understand. That equation appears to have changed with the appointment of the new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan who took over on September 4.

I do not remember young Indian women breathlessly discussing the RBI governor’s sharp jawline ever the way some of them have about Dr. Rajan. At 50, he is young enough not to be considered an unseemly subject for objectification. A B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Dr. Rajan has the right pedigree to stir up a lot of libidinous intellect.

It is amusing to see that when Dr. Rajan speaks of the U.S. Federal Reserve merely postponing “tapering” there are those who think of tapering of a different kind. “Yeah baby, taper that,” is what one hears. Who would have thought that the Indian version of the Fed chairman would sexually arouse young women? There are those who believe that it is Dr. Rajan who has stroked a flaccid rupee back to a firmer shape. (Let me stop the sexual innuendoes here).

It is a good thing if Dr. Rajan’s good looks concentrate ordinary people’s attention on the more serious policy issues. On the day he took over he offered a sanguine view of things without sounding unrealistic. That seemed to settle the rattling nerves in India. In the past couple of weeks he has tried a mix of short-term realism with long-term optimism about India. The fact that the rupee has gained 11 % after dropping to its lowest at 68.8 per dollar on August 28 suggests that the new governor has at the very least had the effect of calming nerves. Of course, this means nothing in a financial world whose default position is one of deliberate fickleness. If Dr. Rajan shows up one of these days with a slight cut on his famous jawline caused by his shaving razor, I suspect the markets would witness bloodshed. I exaggerate, of course, but that’s almost how ridiculously unscientific the financial markets are.

The nausea-causing movements in the rupee value against the dollar over the past few weeks is indicative of how utterly irrational that whole world is despite protestations to the contrary. I have traditionally had a very low opinion of the markets and the way currency values fluctuate. It is not as if the Indian economy has become perceptibly stronger now that it should help the rupee gain 11% just as it was not as if it had diminished so much as to cause the rupee to fall as low as it did.

So it is just as well that the average urban Indian is counting on Dr. Rajan’s sharp jawline to cut through the current mood of doom.

September 22, 2013

Like all gifted singers Osman Mir sings as if he is privy to magnificent sounds and captivating visions in the universe that elude the lesser mortals among us. I suppose that is in keeping with India’s great bhakti tradition. Very often bhakti singing is not about musical perfection but about infusing imperfections with pure devotion to whatever the singer is singing to. Of course, Mir hits no wrong notes here at all.

Serendipity, especially that results from technology, has been a favorite experience for me. Two sources which have led me to most serendipitous discoveries in recent years are YouTube and the Google Art Project. Last night after somehow dragging Saturday through the ennui street I was playing Gujarati singer Ismail Valera’s enduring bhajan ‘Mara vhala ne vadhi ne’. This particular bhajan, although a missive to Krishna, has since my childhood heralded the promise of a new dawn. Valera’s a disembodied voice singing this particular bhajan on the radio and occasionally at concerts was a predominant sound. It was while listening to that on YouTube that I saw in the menu on the margin Osman Mir’s ‘Madi tarun kanku.” One knew the lyrics instantly because it was also one of those enduring compositions heard frequently. It was written and composed by Avinash Vyas.

The lyrics may sound a bit overwrought but in the context they exist they work well. In fact, the opening line is strikingly visual. The flaming red powder (Kanku), whose chemical composition I used to know once upon a time, is a signature offering to Madi or Amba, the preeminent Hindu goddess. The idea that the red flaming powder trickles down and the sun (suraj) rises (ugyo) is fraught with a brilliant dissolve in the league of David Lean’s defining cut in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ when Peter O’Toole blows off the flaming match and is cut to a desert sunrise. Oh, it is so easy to distract me.

Back to Osman Mir and his arresting rendition of the song. I think the original was sung by the redoubtable Asha Bhosle. Mir surpasses her rendition from the moment he opens his mouth. It is inspired singing by someone who is in complete command of his artistry and, more importantly, someone who thoroughly enjoys himself. Mir has the advantage of live performance in that he can engage in vocal assertions of the kind that a studio-recorded version does not always allow.

It turns out Mir is a highly popular presence at religious/cultural events in Gujarat and elsewhere and enjoys a very strong following. I think this particular performance took place at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Mumbai. The reason this one stands out is because Mir sings it as if he was already singing for himself and we happened to intrude. That’s the thing with all gifted singers. They always seem to be in a perpetual rhythm and melody. It is their default temperament.

Let me point out something for the benefit of some of my non-Indian readers, who may not be familiar with audience members showering performers with hard cash other than at strip joints. It is a longstanding tradition in India and Pakistan where patrons express their appreciation for great singing or any other performance in the form of hard cash. Making it rain is a perfectly acceptable form of art appreciation at such semi-classical and pop concerts. It may be crass but at least it has the merit of helping the performer quantify how well he or she has been received. Of course, this rain of cash is separate from whatever performance fee that the musicians get paid.

So here is to Osman Mir. My penury precludes making it rain but let this post be a token of my appreciation for his obvious singing talents.

September 21, 2013

India’s former Army Chief and now a political aspirant General V K Singh is facing potentially damning allegations, including one that says he “misused” secret service funds* to topple the Jammu and Kashmir state government.

Ritu Sarin of the Indian Express, a good old-fashioned print journalist, has a story out that quotes from a secret army report about the alleged machinations of General Singh during his tenure in 2010. The general has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated.

There are three key allegations. One is that as the army chief Singh misused secret service funds to destabilize the government of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in Kashmir. Second is that he authorized the use of funds from the same source to payoff a non-governmental organization (NGO) to tie up his rival in the army General Bikram Singh in a legal battle and thereby influence the line of succession. The third is that the funds were used to buy off-air interception equipment, to conduct "unauthorized" covert operations. All this was under a covert Military Intelligence (MI) unit called the Technical Services Division (TSD) that he set up.

Predictably, an aspect of this controversy that is hogging most Indian media attention is the “timing” of the newspaper publishing these allegations. The question of timing has to do with the fact that General V K SIngh recently shared dais at a political rally addressed by the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Modi is currently India’s most reviled politician and will remain so until the parliamentary elections of 2014. His camp followers argue that General Singh is being attacked as a proxy attack against Modi. The BJP also insists that this is a politically motivated media leak whose “timing” is highly suspicious.

I have never understood this complaint about timing. Why are we so down on timing? In politics, as in life, timing is everything. If the ruling dispensation engages in politically motivated attacks against its opponents, what is particularly wrong about it as long as the substance that fuels such attacks is unimpeachable? It is not my case that the substance in this particular affair is unimpeachable. That remains to be seen. My point is about the political timing of any disclosure. Whining about timing cannot be the main defense of any scandal. Timing is merely a part of statecraft which all political parties do and ought to engage in in order to perpetuate their hold over the state of affairs. All political parties are political parties precisely to be in pursuit of power.

Coming to the substance of the allegations even being stationed in New Delhi would not have qualified me to hold forth on their veracity. To that extent, my distance from the unfolding drama does not necessarily make me less qualified. The report has been submitted by a secret Board of Officers inquiry conducted by the army. To that extent, one can at least accord it some measure of seriousness. Of course, such reports can always be politically instigated or managed. Everything can be politically instigated in a democracy.

In specific terms, one of the allegations says that a Kashmir politician named Ghulam Hassan Mir, who is currently the state’s agriculture minister, was paid Rs. 11.9 million (about $240,000 at the 2010 dollar-rupee exchange rate) to destabilize the Abdullah government. The less credulous among political observers have with some justification pointed out that only a fool would believe that an Indian politician these days would accept such a paltry sum to topple an entire government. As a friend and fellow journalist Mahesh Vijapurkar points out in his Facebook update it is “chickenfeed to politicians. A civic councilor in any major city will treat it as small change.” Mahesh makes a valid point but that said, it is not altogether inconceivable that that amount was aimed at initially stirring up the pot. Sometimes it is the initial shaking up that can lead to major political churning.

On the face of it, the second allegation about trying to influence the line of army succession appears to have a little more meat in it. The antipathies between General V K Singh and the current army chief General Bikram Singh have long been known. From that standpoint secretly funding an NGO to file a public interest litigation case against General Bikram Singh does not seem all that absurd. Whether it was true is another matter but as a strategy it is not so ridiculous. The allegation is that nearly Rs. 24 million (about half a million dollars) was given to this NGO under orders from the Army Headquarters (meaning General V K Singh) to waylay General Bikram Singh into some litigious maze to scuttle his rise as the army chief. The case was dismissed and he did go on to become the army boss.

These are, of course, all allegations and strongly refuted by the general himself. His supporters argue that it is because he was seen with Narendra Modi, the current ruling Congress Party’s prime political target, this secret report was leaked to an obliging newspaper. The Indian Express is not known to be an obliging newspaper but that little detail is swiftly hidden by the general’s supporters.

If the allegation about a sitting army chief trying to topple a democratically elected government, even if it is a state government, is true then it would be the first of its kind in India’s modern history. That alone should merit a more detailed investigation, something the Indian government seems to have shied away from despite having received the secret report in May this year. That is where the question of the timing of this leak comes in. The contention is that as the Modi juggernaut gathers steam, the ruling Congress Party would keep planting political mines such as these allegations along the way.

As votaries of all ancient Indian wisdom, in particular the kind advocated by the great economic and political strategist and thinker Chanakya (370–283 BCE), the BJP should hardly feel justified in whining about political machinations and their timing.

Once you view all this as the great unfolding of the ritual Indian political circus everything becomes clear and comprehensible.

* I do not understand the “misused” part of the whole deal. What, pray tell, is the purpose of any covert funds after all if not misuse them? Misuse is the very definition of any covert fund.